From my pocket I take the black bin liner I have prepared. This is a little joke to myself. Willie came to my attention because of wanting payment to put the bins out. Well, here I am clearing the rubbish. My plan is to cover him up and chuck his phone into the flowing burn below him. He can get a new phone, meditate on schedule as much as he likes, but this weird, disturbing act will always be tied to the thing he loves.
Violence against him, while I guess pleasing in the moment, would get me into proper trouble, but I do kick him in the shins as the plastic sack covers his head.
‘Ouch!’ he shouts ‘What are you doing?’
His phone clatters onto the wooden boards of the bridge. I scrape it along the ground with my toes until it reaches the edge and then I kick it as hard as I can into the burn.
‘I can give you money…’ I hear him say as I jog off, my plan perfectly executed. If Willie wanted to say more it’s lost to the gurgling groaning he’s making. Not understanding the noise, I turn, realising too late I’m risking being identified. He’s negotiated the bag off his body; it drifts away from him in a gentle breeze. Willie doesn’t care about that or me. He’s too concerned with the heart attack it appears he’s having. Clutching his chest, he hangs over the railing of the bridge. His noises stop, and then the weight of the top half of his body propels the bottom half over and into the fast-flowing brown water. He lands face down and stays down, his limp body ebbing in the stream. At the edge of the water, I pick up a stick and prod the soft flesh of Willie’s back. He doesn’t react. Dead people don’t.
13
It’s very hard to be bothered about performing the theatre of work expected in the modern workplace, having just been responsible for a death. How am I supposed to be arsed about responding to emails, when this morning a man was alive and now he is dead and it is because of me? It’s not like I meant to kill Willie. Obviously it was an accident, like misspelling a word or tripping over a wobbly paving stone. But on reflection, the danger that such an event could unfold was always there.
I’ve not fully computed how I feel about Willie’s sudden passing because I’m trying my best to act normal, despite my body pulsating with possibilities. It’s as if, until this morning’s events took place, my body had not been correctly calibrated. The dullness, the muted sensation I believed was what living was for everyone has been replaced; a switch inside me has turned on the big light in my brain. All the feelings, desires and sensations it is possible for a person to have are illuminated within me and I don’t know which one to settle on. While Willie has never been more dead, I have never been more alive.
No thought is sustained. One moment I’m starving, wishing I could eat steak and chips and wash it down with a cold glass of champagne. The next I’m squirming in my chair, the throbbing of my groin so severe I briefly wonder if I could get away with wanking in the work toilets. That thought is replaced with a desire for cash immediately. It is wrong I am poor. Money should be plentiful to me, and it could be – well, at least a little bit – if Dave would give me another commission. It’s been a few days since his last request.
Oh, Dave, you’ve been very quiet, haven’t you? I’ve been working hard all day in my stilettos, would you like to see?
I hope he doesn’t read the message with the sarcastic, needy voice my brain played it back to me in. Begging for male attention is an unpleasant way to live, but the funds to celebrate today would be nice.
It’s only now I realise the office phone is ringing, probably has been ringing for a while. The company policy is all calls should be answered within three rings. Gavin is moving for the receiver with their eyes on me, trying to understand why I’m taking so long. I make a dash and get there before them. ‘Perfect Property Solutions, Jemma speaking, how can I help you?’
The woman on the other end has got herself all ready for an argument. She sighs at me. ‘I mean, you said you’d help me the other day when you made me take a day off my work for a guy not to fix my washing machine properly. It’s started bloody leaking again.’
I would let her go on, but this office is silent and with the volume she’s talking at Gavin will know it’s an angry customer. I must get onto the stage of work and say my lines. ‘I am so sorry to hear that. Which of our properties is it you’re in?’
She gives me the address. It’s a house in Silvertonhill Avenue. Spam Valley to the locals, because when the houses were built they were so expensive the people who lived there could supposedly only afford Spam to eat. When I bring up her file and see how much the rent is I wonder if she can even afford that. ‘I see we sent a handyman over two days ago.’
‘Aye, and he wisnae very handy. I’ve just put on a wash and it’s even worse than before. My kitchen is flooded. Fully flooded.’
‘Goodness, that’s no use at all. I am so sorry.’ I hope she can hear I am really sincerely sorry. A flooded kitchen would be an absolute pain in the hole. ‘I can get an emergency repair over to you by about six.’
It’s creeping up for lunchtime, that’s not too bad. Look at me being good at this meaningless job on this, the day I manslaughtered a landlord. If only she knew the effort I’m putting in for her because I care for the rights of tenants. She goes on about how long the wait is, how unacceptable it all is. Gavin gets up for a glass of water or to collect a piece of printing or something, and I take this chance to speak over the woman. ‘What is unacceptable is the housing system in this country, which has allowed people to swallow up affordable housing for profit. However, I promise you six o’clock is the latest the repair person will be there. I am trying my best.’ Then I hang up, because there’s nothing that will ruin your day like listening to folk moaning, even if they are in the right.
My next task is the construction of an elaborate day’s worth of fictitious meetings with property pricks for Brian’s day away to Leeds next week. He is genuinely going to Leeds. There is a legitimate conference of property developers taking place at a hotel there, that’s what’s made it the perfect cover location for a day away shagging. It’s very clever, really. Whatever poor soul he’s with feels special for getting taken away for the night, and his wife can google the event and all the people he’s locked into meetings with and it’ll all check out. The level of pre-planning Brian does to cheat on his wife is frankly evil, if you give it much thought. So I don’t, not today. I just type in the names and contact details of each person he’s ‘meeting’. My fingers fly over the keys. For twenty-four hours he will be exactly where he says he’ll be, his mobile phone and tracked location entirely his own concern, his movements not factoring into mine, where I choose to be entirely my own business. There is a chance that what I’m inputting is complete shite, since my consciousness is elevated above myself, outside of this moment and focused on my favourite flashes of memory from this morning. The intake of breath as the bag covered Willie’s head, making the plastic rustle; the splash of his body as it hit the water; the lightness of my being as I ran away from him. They repeat in my head until I’m distracted by Gavin returning, holding their Tupperware from the fridge to eat at their desk. They place it next to their keyboard but don’t sit down and go onto theDaily Mailto scroll as they eat, like they do most days.
‘Do you want to go a walk? I don’t feel like eating right now.’
I turn around to look at Brian, who is in his office. He’s recording content for his Instagram, his phone out of my possession and on a tripod in the middle of a ring light. ‘Are we OK to leave him alone?’ I’m already standing. I am caged in this office and can’t be contained much longer.
‘Brian, we’re going for a walk,’ Gavin shouts at him. Brian raises his thumb up high above his head. ‘It’s fine,’ Gavin tells me, in case I didn’t understand the universal symbol for something being alright.
The wind’s picked up; I have to speak loudly otherwise my words are blown away. ‘Do you know what Brian’s filming?’
‘Oh boy, do I. He bored the arse off me in the kitchen about it earlier. It’s all about the four key tactics entrepreneurs like him need to follow to better prepare them for facing all the rejection and failures that come with business. Something a man who was gifted a fully formed company knows all about.’
I’m rooted to the spot, not wanting to lead Gavin in one direction or the other. Of course, I want to go to the park, see if Willie has been found, but keeping a distance would be a safer option.
‘Fancy the museum?’ Gavin asks.
My silence is taken as compliance. We walk towards it, which happens to also be in the direction of the glen. We don’t get far; all the roads that way are blocked off with police tape and manned by officers in uniform.
Seeing the repercussions of my actions, I am filled with the urge to throw up. No, I can’t be here. I want to be as far away from here as possible, not linking myself to this patch of Earth or anything that’s happened on it.
‘We should head in the other direction.’ I tug on Gavin’s sleeve. ‘Looks like we won’t be able to get through.’
Gavin moves on regardless – ‘I’m nosy, two secs’ – and talks to the officer while I hang back and become very interested in the pavement until they return.
